Tumblr crosspost (10 May 2020)
Jan. 25th, 2022 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineRe: Théoden, my headcanon is that he was always something of a people person, apart from the period of Wormtongue’s sway over him. He was aware of how people regarded Thengel: often with admiration, but sometimes with a certain ambivalence, too.
There were those among the Rohirrim who felt that Thengel didn’t quite belong to them, that he didn’t value their ways and history and language as he did Gondor’s. And, well, they weren’t entirely wrong. Théoden was very conscious of both these things, and of their reservations about him: that he would be as Thengel again but more so, with Gondor in his earliest memories and his blood. They respected Gondor, but as a noble and faithful ally with their own ways and customs, not superiors to be imitated.
Théoden himself loved his father as a man and a king, and didn’t breathe a word of judgment—but in the secrecy of his heart, he meant to be a different sort of king when his time came, a true lord of the Eorlingas, down to the bone.
There were those among the Rohirrim who felt that Thengel didn’t quite belong to them, that he didn’t value their ways and history and language as he did Gondor’s. And, well, they weren’t entirely wrong. Théoden was very conscious of both these things, and of their reservations about him: that he would be as Thengel again but more so, with Gondor in his earliest memories and his blood. They respected Gondor, but as a noble and faithful ally with their own ways and customs, not superiors to be imitated.
Théoden himself loved his father as a man and a king, and didn’t breathe a word of judgment—but in the secrecy of his heart, he meant to be a different sort of king when his time came, a true lord of the Eorlingas, down to the bone.